Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
As long as devices support DRM publishers will use it, and the society can't afford to go down the e-book road if that means books will become DRM-infested.
|
 Seems to me that e-books are already pretty DRM-infested. |
E-books are, yes, but books in general are not. We can't go down the e-book road if it means that p-books will be predominantly replaced by e-books that are DRM-infested. Most of the literature must remain unencumbered. |
I don't believe we're in any imminent danger of having paper books replaced by e-books on a large scale -- "this mess" you refer too, of both formats and DRM and the mutual incompatibilities thereof, is just the most obvious and infuriating of the obstacles e-books face.
And, of course, much of what most folks consider "literature" is public domain, and therefore exempted from the "mess" in the first place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
going to a single DRM solution, or DRM that doesn't prevent moving books around seems like at least a small step in the general direction of sanity from my perspective. |
No. It's better to have this current mess so that people will get so sick and tired of it that they unite to abolish DRM. The worst that could happen is that DRM would become barely tolerable for a majority of people. That would maximize the suffering caused by DRM. |
See, I figure they're more likely to get sick and tired of the whole
e-book business and ignore
it completely. Oh, wait, that's largely what's been happening for the last 15 years ....
I know there are those who vehemently disagree with me on this point, and they're quite welcome to their opinions, so far as I'm concerned (especially those who
consider their opinions, the rest of them are just so much noise, don't you think?
), but as far as I'm concerned, if DRM stays out of my way so long as I'm not trying to do anything illegal, then I'm willing to live with it to a large extent. An inter-operable DRM
could go a long way toward that end. It at least gets folks thinking in terms of cooperating, rather than competing to the point of ruining the market.
To my thinking, a common or inter-operable DRM that isn't an obstacle to most folks using e-books as they want to use them (in the sense that it doesn't control where and how they read their books, I mean) would result in
more folks getting involved in e-books. The more folks who are involved with them, the more voices there are griping about the DRM (and the other e-book obstacles), and the more likely the issue is to be truly
resolved instead of just band-aided.
People who have no interest or stake in e-books (whether because of DRM or format conflicts or whatever reason), just aren't likely to unite against
anything having to do with e-books: they won't find intolerable what they simply avoid.
In my experience people tend to have to have a stake in something before they care enough to try to change it. If they don't
care they just don't bother.
The fewer e-book users there
are, the quieter and more ignorable our collective voice is.
But that's just what makes sense to me.